Martin of Tours was the 4th century Bishop of Tours, whose
shrine in France became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims in the
Middle
Ages.

The story most known about him ran
as follows.One day as he was
approaching the gates of the city of Amiens, he met a scantily clad
beggar. He
impulsively cut his military cloak in half to share with the man. That
night
Martin dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak he had given away. He
heard
Jesus say to the angels: "Martin, who is still but a catechumen,
clothed
me with this robe."The part of the
cloak kept by Martin became the famous relic that was preserved in the
oratory
of the Merovingian kings of the Franks at the Marmoutier Abbey near
Tours.

St. Martin's Feast or
Martinmas was considered the first day of winter in the Christian
calendar for
practical purposes.It occurred in the
second week of November.Alluding to the
snows of that season, Germans would say: "St. Martin comes riding on a
white horse."It was said too that
one could predict what sort of winter one might have by the conditions
of St.
Martin's Day.The saying went: "If
the geese at Martin’s Day stand on ice, they will walk in mud at
Christmas."

Blessed Louis Martin and Saint Therese

Louis Martin became “blessed” because he was the father of
Saint Therese of Lisieux, a French nun who died of TB in 1897 at the
tender
age of
twenty four.The impact of her
autobiographical writings, The Story of a
Soul published a year after her death, was so enormous that she has
become,
after Francis of Assisi, one of the most popular saints in the church. She is known as “Petite Fleur.”

Louis Martin had died before his daughter’s
fame.He himself came from an old
Normandy family which has been traced back to an earlier Louis Martin,
born in
Normandy around 1650.

The Martins in Anstey Village

Anstey
village was sandwiched between Leicester and
Charnwood forests in the Middle Ages.It
was the home of the Martin family from 1341.These Martins may have been related to John Martyn, a merchant
who was
mayor of Leicester and its MP around this time.But the linkage has been disputed.

Two members of the family
held the position of Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire and the local
high
school was named after them.The
family leased Anstey Pastures within Leicester forest in 1585 and later
acquired this 110 acre site.Their home at
Anstey Pastures was built in 1833 and they lived there until 1892 when
they
moved to a house in Bradgate known as the Brand.

The Martins of
Melford Place

The
Martin family of Melford Place in Suffolk was a
great supporter of the Holy Trinity church in the village.Laurence Martin who died in 1460 led the
rebuilding of the church during his lifetime.His monument is to be found on the south aisle of the church,
along with
the other family brasses.

Roger
Martin became churchwarden in the reign of Mary and was very active in
re-establishing Catholic worship there.Under Queen Elizabeth he was marked down as a recusant (one who
refuses
the Anglican rites) and was fined £200,
an enormous sum in those days, and deprived of some of his income.He was imprisoned more than once for
sheltering Catholic priests and is said to have escaped pursuit on
occasion by
hiding in a hayrick. He died in 1615 at
the ripe old age of 89 and was buried (in spite of his known
Catholicism) in
his family's chapel at Holy Trinity church.

Roger’s
brother Laurence moved to London and
his son, Sir Roger Martin, prospered there as a merchant and was Lord
Mayor of
London in 1567.

The Martins of Galway

Thomas Martyn, a descendant of the Anglo-Norman FitzMartin
family, had come to Galway around the year 1365.His
descendants became merchants there, one
of the twelve so-called “Tribes of Galway.”

Wylliam Martyn was in 1519 the
first Mayor of the Martyn family which would ultimately produce
nineteen Mayors
and close to thirty Bailiffs and Sheriffs of Galway.He was also responsible for the erection
during his term of what is known today as the Spanish Arch.This was an extension of the town wall from
Martin's Tower to the bank of the Corrib as a measure to protect the
town's
quays.

The Martin home from the early
1600’s was Dunguaire Castle, a tower house near Kinvarra on Galway Bay.Richard Oge Martin, a Catholic nationalist of
the 1630’s and 1640’s, was resident there.It remained with the family until 1922 when the last of this
Martin line
died.

Christian
Martin and His Mennonite Family

Christian
Martin is generally considered as the patriarch
of the Mennonite Martin families in Pennsylvania.He
was born in the Swiss canton of Bern
around the year 1669 and arrived in Philadelphia on the Pink
Plaisance in 1732 at the age of 63 years.He was accompanied by his wife Ells Marty
and two of his children.

There
were
other younger Martins who had come earlier - Christian’s son Christian
in 1724,
David and Jacob Martin on the Molly
in 1727 and Hans Heinrich Martin and his sister on the Britannia
in 1731. All of them settled in the Weaverland valley in
what became Earl township in Lancaster county.There were more Martins than any other name in the township’s
1757 tax
roll.

The early years were harsh.The
community was quite isolated (few
consequently learnt much English) and they had to endure a number of
hot
summers and cold winters and Indian attacks.